Minimalists, maximalists, and other centrists

The center cannot hold,” wrote William Butler Yeats. A cliche, maybe, but I couldn’t get it out of my head as I attended a press conference last week with Dr. Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary. Ahead of a $1,000-a-plate tribute next week marking his 18th year at the top, Schorsch briefed religion reporters on his accomplishments and the challenges facing what was once America’s largest Jewish movement.

There was a lot to boast about. Rabbi Schorsch has overseen the creation of the country’s largest graduate school of Jewish education. JTS will bestow a record number of degrees this week at its annual commencement (135), and enrollment in its five separate schools, at 650, is the highest it has ever been. The Ramah camps and Solomon Schechter day schools remain incubators for America’s Jewish communal leadership class.

The concentration of Jewish brainpower at 3080 Broadway, said Schorsch, creates a “critical mass that is its own blessing.”

Still, Schorsch frets about the future of his movement beyond Manhattan, and by extension the future of American Jewry. He worries that only 46 percent of American Jews belong to a synagogue, a number that threatens to deplete the “social capital” that produced the country’s federation leadership, its donor class, its Jewish community center members. “A minority of American Jews support the totality of Jewry,” he lamented.

And as for the Jews who do affiliate, the Conservative movement is losing market share. The Orthodox community is surging in numbers and influence, while the Reform movement is capturing more and more of those Jews who grew up in Conservative synagogues.

“The primary attrition is to the left, not the right,” said Schorsch, citing figures that 9-10 percent of those raised Conservative become Orthodox, while 30 percent identify as Reform. Reform benefits, he said, “from the climate of individualism and autonomy.” Orthodoxy, meanwhile, is attractive to Jews — even graduates of the Conservative system — who are looking for more than the “minimalist” (Schorsch’s term) Judaism offered at many Conservative synagogues.

Meanwhile, the movement joins centrist Christian denominations in its struggle over homosexuality. Openly gay students are not permitted to seek ordination in the rabbinical seminary or cantorial school, and the movement does not allow its rabbis to perform same-sex commitment ceremonies or weddings.

Schorsch supports these positions but acknowledges the pressures that are building from within and without. He said he is not surprised to hear that perhaps a majority of JTS students supports equality for gays in the seminary and synagogues. “They are products of the American university, which has a distinct coloration,” he said.

But unlike the Reform movement, the Conservative movement considers itself bound by Halacha, or rabbinic law, and its decisors say they cannot be swayed by the winds of public opinion.

Schorsch also warned of a slippery slope on which halachic compromises that empower gays create pressure for the movement to accept “patrilineal descent.” It’s been over 20 years since the Reform movement began regarding as Jews those whose only Jewish parent is the father, and intermarriage rates have only been rising. “It’s naive to consider the question of same-sex marriages or ordaining of gays in a vacuum,” said Schorsch.

The Conservative movement is not alone in its struggle between tradition and modernity. Each of the movements is being elbowed on its right and left. A rightward-leaning Orthodoxy is hearing murmurs from rabbinical students who call themselves “open”; older Reform Jews are feeling threatened by the spiritual and religious innovations of New Traditionalists.

The Conservative dilemma is everyone’s dilemma in another way. For all their ideological diversity, American Jews were bound by their ethnicity, a common set of cultural assumptions and shared experiences. As ethnicity wanes, as the thick stew of immigrant and urban experiences becomes diluted, on what basis will young Jews consider themselves part of a Jewish “people”?

Not surprising for a university chancellor, Schorsch is betting on the classroom. “To withstand the allurements of total assimilation, the next generation of Jews must be firmly planted in the soil of Judaism,” he said. “The only way to attain that goal is serious Jewish education which begins early and never ends.”

I’m hardly objective in this case. I belong to a Conservative synagogue and my kids are in Schechter. I grew up Reform but itched for a deeper engagement with the prayer book and Jewish text. I davened Orthodox for a while, but couldn’t accept the separate roles for men and women and other core aspects of Orthodox theology. In Conservative Judaism I found an appropriate blend of commitment, exploration, tradition, and tolerance for diversity.

My synagogue, however, is somewhat unusual in the Conservative movement in that it has a critical mass of those who fully observe the Sabbath and an unusually high proportion of rabbis and communal professionals in the pews. In terms of “minimalists” and “maximalists,” mine skews maximalist.

“Our synagogues are not yet attuned to absorbing the products of serious Jewish education in the life of the congregation,” the chancellor conceded. “The average Conservative synagogue serves entry-level Jews rather than advanced Jews. There’s a disconnect, and we need to make sure that we don’t lose the most committed products of our educational system.”

Ultimately, the challenge to Conservative Judaism — and American Jewry — is positively Yeatsian.

“It’s hard to be a centrist in this country,” said Schorsch. “The social forces of religiosity push people to the margins. The challenge is creating a synagogue that is inclusive but predicated on conviction. How do you get passionate conviction and still remain open to diversity?”